Bringing Up Father

Eight panels follow the domestic collision between stout, polka-dotted Maggie and her pipe-smoking husband Jiggs, caught uninvited in the kitchen. A visitor claiming to be Jiggs's sister is exposed when Maggie finds a pipe and chewing tobacco left in the dining room — the punchline landing in the final panel with Maggie's deadpan accusation. George McManus drew Bringing Up Father in a clean line style derived from Art Nouveau, with rounded figures and patterned clothing that read crisply in newsprint reduction. Launched in 1913 for King Features Syndicate, it became one of the most widely reprinted daily strips in the world. Strips like this one — with their recurring cast, panel-to-panel continuity, and integrated speech balloons — directly supplied the page grammar that early comic book publishers simply reprinted and eventually imitated.